“What happens when you recruit dozens of students to perform a maze-based computer task and then you ratchet up the competitive pressure? Does their performance improve or do they just cheat more?” Read more . . .

“Narcissists love themselves. Even in psychology experiments. This is a problem for psychologists trying to study narcissists in the laboratory because narcissists are likely to present themselves in the best possible light, inflating their abilities on self-report surveys, and generally being oblivious to their own true selves (Vazire, 2010).” Read more . . .

“This oil spill sure is getting depressing. We’ve become extremely talented at hiding away the ill effects of our consumption decisions. We don’t see the inhumane chicken farms behind our chicken McNuggets, or the Chinese factories that produce our shoes, or the offshore oil rigs that extract our oil from the center of the earth. The end result is that, when we’re finally forced to confront the ugliness that makes our civilized life possible, we’re shocked and appalled. My cheap ground beef comes from that feedlot? My gas station depends on that infrastructure?” Read more . . .

“For some time now, there have been concerns about the CSI Effect on our juries. In short, this is a belief/fear that potential jurors who watch television shows such as the CSI franchise will presume real labs can produce the same sort of evidence—and anything that falls short of that causes reasonable doubt. Litigators have lived in fear of the CSI Effect despite rising evidence it may actually be an urban (and rural!) litigation myth.” Read more . . .

“In a fascinating study just published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers have shown that we make buying decisions even when we aren’t paying attention to the products, and that fMRI observation of brain activity can predict these decisions. This new work builds on previous research by Stanford’s Knutson and CMU’s Loewenstein which showed that purchase decisions could be predicted when subjects were shown explicit offers.” Read more . . .

For previous installments of “Situationism on the Blogosphere,” click here.